Road transportation function is a key element for developing and developed economies. It has played and still is playing a key role for economic growth and sustainability.
With an increase of trade across borders and within the cities, increased delivery points footprints, increased customers’ expectations the demand for transportation function is increasing rapidly. This increase demands digitization of the road transportation that can help to improve efficiency, traceability, security and have a positive contribution towards environment.
There are numerous benefits of digitizing the road transportation functions that touch on efficiency, optimization, speed and timing . here are some of the most important benefits:
Efficient Operations:
Digitization will allow for better and efficient operations as parties involved will have a better and more accurate data when it comes to goods arrival time, location of the nearest truck for new loads and even fill rate for trucks with the right IoT.
Operations teams can be aligned more effectively resulting in an improved productivity. Particularly for those organizations who are suffering from unclarity when it comes to planning and scheduling especially when dealing with multiple vendors.
Digitization also plays a pivotal role in cost efficiency, by having less human intervention, automation of existing manual processes, Realtime data which can be achieved by having complete visibility of the transport and logistics processes and acting on them once they occur.
Information Sharing:
With effective use of digital solutions, all involved parties will be able to have live information by the help of vehicle tracking and integration with online maps ensuring high traceability. This enables to plan the picking, packing & dispatch without keeping a lot of contingencies.
From customer perspective as well, some important data/updates can be shared seamlessly as they happen. Saving time of support staff and clients time as well.
Information sharing can help to assess the performance of service provider as well. With too much data being generated, useful information can be fetched by using different algorithms.
Better Decision making for Service Providers:
Automation is one of the end goals of digitalization. With successful integration of online maps along with the right IoT and systems, the optimum routes can be generated automatically monitoring the traffic for instance (after feeding it with some factors like service levels, driver working hours, area coverage…etc). This will ensure that deliveries get to the destination taking the least possible time. The fuel consumption will also be lower contributing to the environmental sustainability by using less fuel and releasing less CO2 emissions. It will also save the most precious asset for service provider and customer, that is Time.
Integration with industry:
The world is moving towards digitalization and adapting digitalization for road transportation has become essential in order to remain relevant and do proper integration with other industries. Such integration will allow companies to have better planning and smooth turnaround of operations. Industry integration results in coopetition and cooperation both creating a healthy ecosystem for logistics players.
Human capital development:
The adaptation of digitalization involves upgrading of human capital within the organization. To cope up with the latest technology and understanding the evolving customer requirements, it is important to have a team aligned towards that path. With proper trainings and thorough implementation of new systems, all parties involved will end up having upgraded staff making collaboration easier and faster.
Safety and Control:
Digitalization ensures effective monitoring of vehicle’s mechanical health with the help of IoT, also driver behavior like over speed, harsh break, harsh cornering, route, accidents etc. This ensures strict control measures for the safety of drivers and the general public on the roads. Moreover, cams can also be installed monitoring driver & the road for increased security & proof of incidents when something goes wrong.
